The Darkness Behind The White Picket Fence

As everyone now knows, the Lindsay Clancy case is a complicated and heartbreaking case.

I've been watching the trial and the testimonies of everyone involved, and as the prosecutor was going through some of the photos of the home, I noticed a white fence around their yard.

Then I thought to myself:

"It's like they are a white picket fence kind of family."

I saw all of the photos of them before this terrible thing happened, and they looked just like any other average family of five.

Before this happened, you would never think, just by looking at them, that they would be dealing with something as horrific as this.

But clearly, you just never know what's going on behind that white picket fence.

The majority consensus is that she had postpartum psychosis, and that would make her not criminally responsible for the murder of her children.

But she had help. She had support from her husband, a nanny, and many therapists to help her with this condition.

And yet, I can't help but think:

If she knew God and had a relationship with Him, could this have been prevented?

I couldn't help but think of my own experience during the early months of postpartum.

I had very dark intrusive thoughts.

Mostly revolving around:

"What if I accidentally dropped my baby?"

Or:

"What if I looked away for a second and somehow my baby drowned in the bathtub?"

Or:

"What if I wake up and my baby is dead in the bassinet?"

I even had thoughts about:

"What if I died? I wonder if he would be okay without me?"

I thought there was something seriously wrong with me.

But then I realized that many women share these thoughts — especially as first-time moms.

I had so many terrible thoughts, but fortunately there was a very quiet, steady voice that I hung on to.

And that was the voice of God.

I can remember Him telling me in the middle of the night while my baby was crying:

"Don't worry, you will rise again."

It was deafeningly quiet, but it rang in my heart like a judge's gavel hitting the wood.

And I held onto those words.

To be completely honest, even though I had all the dark thoughts that I had, I could never fathom doing what she did.

But what I can have compassion for is the fact that darkness is REAL.

And it can affect literally everyone.

It doesn't discriminate.

One minute you are touching heaven, and the next you could be in the depths of hell.

No one is immune to that experience in life.

But we are all responsible for the things we DO and the choices we make.

Having dark intrusive thoughts should be talked about. Out in the open.

You shouldn't be made to feel like you are not normal for having them.

Because having a terrible thought doesn't mean you want to act on it.

But the act of killing your children is not normal. And I hope it's never made to be normal.

We have to fight the dark thoughts in our minds.

We have to do it to save our lives and the lives of those we love the most.

It's a necessity in this life.

Jordan Peterson once said:

"Good men aren't 'nice.' Good men are actually very dangerous men who have their capacity for danger (and violence) under VOLUNTARY control."

We all have the capacity to be very dangerous, violent, and powerful people — if that power is used for evil.

The difference is that some people have control over it, and some don't.

And I think that's something we don't like to talk about anymore.

We want to believe that everyone is simply a victim of their circumstances.

And sometimes, people really are victims of terrible circumstances.

But I don't believe we can completely remove personal responsibility from the human experience.

We can't always be the victim of our circumstances, even though today, and all throughout history, there has been power in being one.

I've found, though, that you can't bend reality without it snapping back at some point down the road.

Choices have consequences.

And there are some things in this life that we may never fully understand.

I don't know exactly what was happening inside Lindsay Clancy's mind.

I don't know what she saw or what she believed was happening in those final moments.

And I don't know what the final judgment should look like.

I'd like to believe that if this were a movie that had a more inspiring plot - her children would've loved to see her be the hero in the story, to rise again, and to heal. And fight the darkness that highjacked her mind. But instead three innocent children lost their lives.

And I believe that justice will be done for those children.

It just might not be on this earth.